


The Son of Amaterasu

by jusrecht



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-04
Updated: 2008-05-04
Packaged: 2018-02-11 08:53:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2061837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jusrecht/pseuds/jusrecht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How Suzaku made it through the whole year in Britannia: by repeating this cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Son of Amaterasu

  
It was a familiar route, slipping between cracked, weather-beaten walls, small stone steps ascending quietly like an abandoned path to heaven. The air was thick, humid under armies of grey clouds, but permeated by a much more unsavory stench. Humans. The poor and the fallen, a far cry from the angels.  
  
Two kids ran past him in the narrow alley, and he pressed his back to the wall, the murky white paint crackling and sticking to his jacket, little, ruined bits corroded by time. There were small windows carved into the wall, decorated with pieces of brittle old wood in vertical pattern, a grotesque parody of the long-forgotten glory of the East. Windows of castles and houses of great, ancient families, its walls and corridors threaded with hundred-year histories and long-standing pride.  
  
Ghosts of the past.   
  
In reality, there were only these people with their sunken eyes and tired face, shambling around like ghosts of their former self. There was no castle with red gleaming roof under the rising sun, only a dirty slum where second-class citizens lived. Servants. Beggars. Whores. He had their skin colour, a light shade of brown – perhaps only a little paler, but this distinction disgusted him.   
  
Different. He didn’t belong here with these people, not after enjoying a traitor’s life on the lap of luxury, encased in his white pristine uniform. Britannia’s dog, they screamed.  
  
Perhaps the only reason why no one had tried to kill him so far was because they didn’t know his face. The Knight of Seven had a name, a title, but not a face. A traitor who found peace in his anonymity among the very people he had betrayed. Not a Britannian, but not a Japanese either.  
  
Sometimes it made him think if he wasn’t a ghost himself.  
  
Dirt and pebbles shuffled under his shoes as he continued his slow ascent. There were sparse noises of everyday lives, muted by walls and nailed planks, and then the occasional sound of wind chime and reawakening of old memories of yore. Summer. Beautiful summer nights with crickets and fireworks. Small bites of cool watermelon. His father’s rare smiles. But here, the chimes sounded dead, helpless in the shadow of towering buildings. Like the people.  
  
A few more steps and he came to a small clearing. On its center stood a carved rock, surrounded by small wooden structures which represented four gates of the wind. A cheap imitation of a shrine, crudely made by inexperienced but desperate hands. It might not mean much, but a number of people sat around it, head bowed so low that their chin touched their chest, or face turned toward the sky, eyes shut in a spell of prayer, or hidden in the fold of arms, mourning but tired – much too tired to cry.  
  
He seated himself among them, fingers crushing each other on his lap, and looked at their faces, etched those lifeless looks in the scrawled pages of his mind. So he wouldn’t forget. So he couldn’t _possibly_ forget. Who he was and what he was. Whom he owed and what he owed.  
  
Only when the pages were full or he couldn’t bear to write on them anymore, that he examined the dirt on his shoe, and listened to the murmurs of familiar words, almost foreign now on his tongue when he tried to taste them. _Nippon. Chuugi. Jiyuu._  
  
Japan. Loyalty. Freedom.  
  
Big words for a small boy. He wasn’t one of the sixteenth-century samurais in the heroic stories, with valour in their sword and honour in their blood. He was a murderer hidden behind armour of white steel. It was killing and yet it was clean, pristine, almost pure in its iniquity, under its pretense of virtuousness. There was no dirty work, no dry blood under his nails, because blood only pooled inside Knightmare’s cockpits, on the execution platform, or beneath Lancelot’s feet. None on him except in his heart. Murderer, murderer.  
  
The first droplets of rain returned him to his still empty pages and the people around him. One or two rose to find a shelter but most just didn’t care. Hands clenched tight. Bodies curled. Wishing. Dreading. _Dying._  
  
And then a withered old woman came. Suzaku raised his eyes, following her limping as she shuffled through the crowd. In front of the makeshift shrine, she placed something small wrapped in layers of dark green leaves. Riceball, a distant part of his mind supplied. For an offering.   
  
He could feel the people around him reacting. They waited, long enough until she at least left their circle, before skinny hands rushed forward to seize the meager piece of food, clawing at each other. He watched this unexpurgated display of savagery for a few long seconds before turning his face away, fingers digging so deep into his shins that they would have drawn blood if it wasn’t for his jeans. The old woman caught his eyes and smiled at him, a sad, toothless smile, and Suzaku scrambled to his feet and ran.  
  
He ran all the way back from where he came. Stone steps crushed beneath his feet. Gales whipping his face. Raindrops pounding down his body, but all he could feel was the sick, _sick_ feeling in his stomach. He didn’t stop until he had left the slum and its stench and its little shrine and its _ghosts_. They weren’t ghosts of the past. They were ghosts now and they would still be ghosts tomorrow. The next week. In the future.  
  
“Are you done?”  
  
Suzaku whipped his head up so fast and would have attacked the speaker if his mind hadn’t caught up with his instinct. Gino was standing in the rain, arms folded in front of his chest with a small bag in the left crook, baseball cap askew on top of his golden head. There was a moment of blank inaction, and then before Suzaku could react, Gino had already grabbed his arm.  
  
“We should find some place to…” The rest of his words were drowned by the rain, but Suzaku just let himself be dragged away by the other knight. He couldn’t really focus on anything and he had forgotten since when Gino had started appearing in the vicinity after his weekly visit to the slum. He never asked and Gino never offered any explanation.  
  
They reached the back of a dingy old shop, the small canopy overhead providing at least a decent sort of shelter. The rain continued to pour and Suzaku stared at the way it battered down the earth, making the world shudder beneath his feet. Destroy. Destroy it. It wasn’t a world worth living. Destroy it so its ghosts–  
  
“It’s going to let up soon,” Gino’s voice smoothly interrupted the frenzied chant in his head and Suzaku’s eyes involuntarily flickered toward the sky. Grey clouds. The wrath of the gods, punishing their people to rot in hell, to suffer as ghosts, hungry, robbed of their freedom and names and language that once used to speak prayers to Amaterasu and…  
  
He shivered, and it might be not because of the rain, but Gino put an arm around his shoulders all the same, and he seized the hand, crushing it between his fingers, holding, holding, holding onto it until he could feel it bruising, until he could feel the blood coursing beneath, until he could _feel_. The other man was silent, waiting until his breathing evened out and the small tremors wrecking his body ceased.  
  
The rain continued to pour.  
  
“I just bought some green tea,” Gino then said, light enough without sounding too cheerful as he showed the small bag in his left hand. “We can have some in your place if you want, and you can teach me how to make proper tea.”  
  
Suzaku looked up. He would have laughed if he could. He wanted to destroy Britannia, but then this… _Britannian_ came and smiled at him and stood waiting for him in the rain. It was pathetic, to be mollified by a smile or a little act of kindness, but he was tired of destroying things, killing, massacring. Thinking of ghosts. Running away from them.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Gino smiled, and when he did, Suzaku found that he could breathe once more.   
  
And perhaps live for another week.  
  
  
 ** _End_**

 


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